4,910 of 5,041 people found the following review helpful:
First Impressions from a Kindle 1 owner, February 25, 2009.
By
P. Inhofer.
On the one hand I love my
Kindle 1... I use it everyday, I subscribe to my favorite
newspaper, I mark up my
books with annotations, highlights and bookmarks.
On the other hand my
Kindle 1 annoys me... unintended page changes, the awkward way I sometimes have to hold it to keep from hitting buttons, the sometimes slow page refresh, and the screen freezes that now has me traveling with a paper clip lest I need to do a reset while commuting on the train.
I've had the
Kindle 2 in my hands for almost a day and have carried it on one commute. What follows is my "first impressions" review of the
Kindle 2 from the perspective of an owner of the original
K1. What's different, what's better and what's worse?
5 big things I immediately noticed as different:
First, when taking the
K2 out of the box I immediately noted that the back cover is not easily removable (if at all) and won't slip off in my hands - as was frequent with the
K1. The keyboard is also much much smaller and less obtrusive.
The second thing I noticed is power management. No longer do I have to press and hold two buttons to put the device to sleep. The switches for On/Off and Wireless On/Off are gone. There's a single small switch at the top of the
K2 that handles Sleep.
The third thing I noticed - where's the silver strip? In fact, the entire navigation structure has been completely revised - I'm still getting used to it but it's a huge step forward. The silver strip has been replaced by a 4-way rocker that can also be pressed for "OK" commands, creating bookmarks, and doing highlighting.
The fourth thing I noticed - while page changing doesn't seem to me to be particularly faster - almost every other interaction on the screen is vastly accelerated... scrolling the cursor, looking up words, highlighting text, and typing text.
The fifth thing I noticed - a new power cable. This unit uses USB cables that are not compatible with
K1. It's a bit of a bummer since I was hoping my wife and I could share power cables (she's taking over my
K1).
What's better:
Navigation is a huge improvement. Moving the cursor to a word and having the definition of the word immediately pop up on the bottom of the screen is terrific. Using the rocker to move between articles in a newspaper makes scanning the paper much faster and enjoyable. Calling up the Menu strip is much faster and interactive. Clearly,
Amazon was hard at work to make navigation quicker and easier. The hard work is apparent.
Buttons: The
K1 was a constant struggle with inadvertent page changes. The design was flawed from the beginning. The single best improvement in the
K2 took a few minutes of concentrated reading to realize... the button hinges are on the outside - at the edge - of the
K2. You need to press on the interior of the button to get it to click. This change alone has saved me from several inadvertent page changes. Combine that with the smaller button sizes and one major source of frustration has been instantly eliminated!
Size: The
K2 is thinner than the iPhone. It feels denser and maybe a tad heavier - although I did buy the premium cover which snaps into the
K2 and adds to the weight (btw, I love the premium cover and think it's worth the investment).
Network Speed: The
K2 can use G3 cellphone connections and when it's activated it makes a considerable difference in interactivity to the
Kindle Store and when downloading Archived content.
Power Management: The little power button at the top of the Kindle is really a power slide. That is, slide it to toggle Sleep mode on and off. Slide and hold to do a full power down. And the
K1's wireless on-off switch has been replaced by a menu choice in software. Works for me. Also, compared to the
K1 waking from sleep is super-fast.
What's worse...
There isn't much I liked better in the
K1 than the
K2. One thing: calling up clippings and notes. In the
K2 these items only list the first sentence or two of my highlights. In the
K1 it displays the entire highlight - which makes reading through them much easier and more like reading Cliff Notes. The new interface in
K2 is annoying and makes the feature much less useful. I'll be writing to
Amazon to see if we can get that changed.
Closing thoughts...
The
K2 is a big refinement over the
K1. It feels as easy to read as the
K1 but doesn't seem any crisper to my eyes (I usually read at point sizes 3 & 4). In this regard, as a book, the
K1 and
K2 are comparable. I wouldn't run up my credit card to buy the
K2 from a belief that it's fundamentally easier to read. However, in my short time with the
K2 it's a more enjoyable device to use. The change in the hinging and size of the buttons is major plus and would make it hard to go back to the
K1.
Amazon broke a few paradigms that
K1 users are accustomed to and I found myself going to the
K2 User Guide to figure out some content management issues that have been changed in this release.
Why 4 stars and not 5? The Kindle will never get 5 stars from me until
Amazon implements the notion of a lending library where I can lend another Kindle user a book; which would have the book would disappear from my Kindle and appear on theirs. After x number of days the book would automatically be returned to me and taken off the other person's Kindle.
Amazon says they want the device to disappear and content to stand out. I say: Until I can lend a friend a book the Kindle will never quite live up to that standard and will be, in my book, stuck at 4 stars.
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